Ezike Defends State’s Calculation of Deaths Related to Coronavirus

Published May 19, 2020•Updated on May 19, 2020 at 5:14 pm

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Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public
Health, says that the state is continuing to review data about deaths related
to coronavirus, but that there are a number of challenges involved when trying
to parse out whether a person died with COVID-19 as a directly contributing
factor, or whether they just died while sick with the disease.

According to Ezike, that challenge is especially prevalent in
respiratory illnesses and cardiac illnesses.

“It’s very hard to separate the respiratory illness from
some of these other manifestations that could also be linked to COVID, so there
is a reason to put them together,” she said. “Even if someone had heart
disease, global data has established that (COVID-19 can cause) more serious
complications, and we’ve seen that for heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease.”

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The director also said that the coronavirus is associated with causing embolic phenomenon, or dangerous blood clots, and that those clots can lead to death by causing stroke or a heart attack, especially in vulnerable populations and those residents with comorbidities.

Those factors can cause more challenges for those trying to
accurately account for the coronavirus death toll in Illinois, which currently
stands at 4,379.

“Even if somebody was very elderly and they were maybe in hospice,
we still can’t say that their COVID infection didn’t hasten the death, and so
it’s relevant that COVID-19 maybe had a chance to accelerate that process,” she
said.

“We are reporting those deaths that have laboratory
confirmation, meaning that they have been tested and a laboratory test
indicates that they were COVID-19 positive,” she said during a press
conference.

Ezike said that the state is being careful to make sure to
weed out deaths where the patient had COVID-19, but died in a manner completely
separate from the virus, such as a gunshot wound or a motor vehicle crash.

“We will continue to work to provide, quickly and
responsibly and accurately, what we are in fact seeing here in Illinois,” she
said.